I am Everywhere
by Notasitseems-x
Summary: Pierre/Lucy. 'It's tiring being in love with a ghost.


So I wrote this just after I saw the film last week. I apologise because it's not properly beta'd. I wanted to go over it but every time I go to work on it I just can't seem to do anything to it, so instead of going stale in my documents I'm going to post it. All grammar/ factual/other mistakes and bad writing are my own. I hope that it works on some level. Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

I am everywhere.

She's like his twisted guardian angel, clearing the wreckage from his path with a simple sweep with her unholy powers. Sometimes at night when it's still and he squeezes his eyes shut tight and pushes everything else out he swear he can hear her breathing, can feel her eyes on him searching.

He thinks he might be going slowly mad.

Professor Norman still has the memory stick, they were all worried of the potential destruction it could cause so it is hidden away whilst the good minds debate, discuss and rehash what to do with the knowledge contained in that tiny piece of plastic. Luckily, it would seem that she had the presence of mind to make all the destruction she left in her wake, and the paths that would lead anyone to her, CPH4 or the information, disappear. Professor Norman was especially grateful about that. Personally, he would have thought the good Doctor would have destroyed the damn thing if they weren't so concerned it was what was keeping her alive. The first time he thought that, the radio crackled and musical laughter rang out. She was taunting him: he was clearly limited by his inferior brain. He scowled at the radio but it lay dormant, innocuous. That was her flaw, he may be restricted but he was still human.

He often wondered what she was like before the CPH4, what her interests were, her hopes and dreams. He thinks that she is kind, loving even. That moment when she looked into his eyes and brushed her lips against his a reminder he swears he saw it. A flicker of something. He latched onto it for the same reason she did to him.

After the clear up of the case, made easier by her omnipotent presence, life returns to the way it was before: drug busts, assaults, gang attacks. No ridiculous car chases, flying men or unnaturally bright blue eyes. A low level buzzing settles into his brain and after two weeks he returns to the doctor who patched him up after that day.

'Are you sleeping?'

He grunts from where he's slouched on the examination table.

'I'll take that as a no' The doctor sighs 'you've been through a traumatic experience, you lost men. I'm going to prescribe you some painkillers and a mild sedative. If you're still having trouble, come back and see me.'

When he gets home, he puts them down on his bedside table to remind him to take them but when comes back to them they are gone.

It's not long before she's in his dreams. That word however does them injustice; they're vivid, real experiences that stay with him during his waking hours. At first, she's just as he remembers, even down to the slinky black dress and monotone voice. But as time progresses she becomes more, human. He desperately wants to know if she's accessing parts of her old self, or if it is just simply spending time with him. He tries to ask, but she just looks at him in that coy yet assessing way she has and says

'We're meeting in your dreams and you want to know that?' He soon drops it. He loves to make her laugh because in those moments he hears her natural voice.

That is down to you

'What about your family. Do you haunt them while they sleep?' He jokes on one occasion, but his remark has some weight behind it. He does wonder what happened to them, if she worked her magic there too. She stills, and he can see the muscles in her leg tense.  
'They are free now. All they know is that I am safe. They do not need to worry.' She sounds so cold in that moment, a robot repeating a meaningless sentiment. He changes the subject and she shuffles in her seat, he doesn't miss that in the movement she swipes near her eyes.  
Human, superhuman, the lines are more blurred than they thought.

Their meetings takes place only in venues he knows, they never go anywhere new, and again he wonders if she could do that but chooses not to.

'Why?' he asks one time when they're sitting in his flat. (She always picks the places and they've been coming almost every time lately.) He likes that he doesn't have to elaborate with her.  
'For the same reason you've begun going to bed as early as you can.'  
He laughs and drinks from his beer and she stretches her legs up onto the sofa so that they are almost in his lap. She runs a hand through her hair and considers him. There's a knocking at the door and her face becomes serious her head snapping immediately to the sound, he voice serious.

'You have to go.'

'No' his heart sinks, he hates leaving her. He didn't know when he'd become obsessed with a ghost, but these things have a habit of creeping up on you.

Suddenly he's back in his room, the duvet on top of him is heavy like the reality of her absence. The loud determined blows on his front door are his sentencer.

'Why didn't you ring?' He asks his lieutenant grumpily as he finds trousers and shrugs into a jacket his eyes lingering on the sofa where he was just moments ago, and he swears the throw is wrinkled from where she ran he legs along it. He shakes his head at his own pathetic wishful thinking.

'We did. Six times'

'I must have been tired'

His lieutenant eyes him warily

'Third time this month boss.'

'Hmm.'

-  
After that night something between them shifts, they tapped into something that made him give into his desire for her. He'd been stoically ignoring it, after all, to most people she was a figment of his imagination. Only the good doctors and a handful of dead people knew the truth. But after that night their interactions are sexually charged.

He wakes up in a warm sweat an uncomfortable ache in his groin. He was used to morning wood, but this was something more, just her. But every time he tried to do something about his, er, problem, he would be back there, dead bodies, shooting Jang, that awful black stuff that twisted and grew and took hold like fungus. Not to mention the smell, a melange of so many things including decay, chemicals and burning plastic. He just couldn't do it.

Then one night it changed. As soon as his eyes shut he was in a dark Parisian street walking to club (just as he had done for a birthday a few years ago, but without his brother and best friend he noted wryly) he walks in and the same girl that had flirted with him before he'd even been to the cloakroom does so again. He steps into the main room, which is alive with music with heavy bass line that beats hard in his chest, the floor undulates with bodies. He is ready to sidestep to avoid someone crashing into him with a glass full of something sticky when he spots her leant against the bar, and he forgets. When he reaches her all sopping and disgruntled and her eyes are alive with mirth.

'So easily distracted' she scalds handing him another shirt.

'I'll be right back' she stares at him 'I'm not changing here' he laughs.

He emerges from the toilets and she is right there. All close and searching and he cannot think. Intoxicated. He realises now her intention, people come to clubs to find someone, to let go. And she has brought him here.

Her lips are soft and yielding against his as he pushes her against the wall, and her fingers find purchase in his clean crisp shirt digging through to the skin underneath. He puts everything into that kiss and she answers him in kind. What the hell is going on he thinks distantly I've lost my only answer is a light digging pressure from the hand at his back and her legs coming to wrap round his waist which effectively stop all thought. He notices a lightness at the edge of his vision and he panics thinking reality is seeping in. When he breaks away he notices the dark dingy corridor of the club has been replaced by the doorway of his flat. Her face is almost unrecognizable to him, so alight it is with desire, the most basic of human emotions. She closes the distance and they stumble to his room. His subconscious niggles again that none of this is real but he blocks it out by stripping her out of her dress and paying her body homage. After all he probably owes her his life. He loves the vulnerability she displays through hers whimper and her encouraging hand in his hair as he finds the right spots. It is a stark contrast to the single-minded clinical woman that ploughed through cars and plucked bags of drugs from dead men without a second though. When he finally enters she is on top and he thinks if he hasn't lost is his mind he has now. He buries his face in her neck and loses himself in the sensations. When his vision begins to whiten this time he knows it's too good to be true.

He wakes up, his release on his stomach and sheets the only reminder that any of it was real.

The anger sets in.

He goes back to the doctor and manages to get the strongest sedative he can. He holds on tightly to the packet and take one as soon as he crosses his threshold. It works for the first 2 nights but then the box goes missing.

He refuses to sleep.

He decides to go out on a date instead. They don't get past ordering drinks before Emilie's face goes blank and she tonelessly tells him she has to leave.

He scowls at every electrical device he passes on his way home.

It's 2 o'clock in the morning and he's sat on his sofa drinking scotch staring at the TV.

His phone beeps

I am everywhere.

He stares at it for a full two minutes his breathing heavy before he throws the glass at the wall

'MAIS JE NE PEUX PAS TE VOIR' he roars.

You see me every night.

His grips slackens and the phone drops with a thud to the floor and he crumbles, head buried in his hands.

He knows he's dreaming because he's laid out on the sofa and he can feel her breath tickling his ear.

'Just leave me alone' he grumbles

'You are my humanity'

That grabs his attention; he scrambles to his elbows hoping to hear more.

'Your humanity? I thought I was a reminder.'

'You were' she shifts on the seat placed at the side of the sofa like she's visiting in hospital or something 'but you became more.' She sighs and looks down, she's nervous, fidgety, he's spent so much time with her, been consumed by her but he's never seen her like this. 'It's overwhelming, consuming even using 100% of my cerebral capacity, I needed to cling on to something, and I chose you. I know it was wrong, to torment you like this. But I have knowledge, and I can see everything, even what could have been.' Us hangs in the air between them. 'But it's not right, so that's why I'm letting you go.'

'Don't I get a say in this?'

She stands and her smile says it all.

She heads to the door but hesitates

'You think that all this isn't real, but just because you're not awake when you experience it doesn't make it fake. You still feel, and do, and learn and see.'

He nods 'I've read Harry Potter'

She cocks her head and he knows she's flicking through her knowledge trying to find the reference. That's the problem with knowing everything it can take time to locate it.

He knows she's got it because her smile travels to her eyes.

When the door opens his vision flashes like looking at the midday sun and then he's back on the sofa and awake. His phone beeps but he cannot take his eyes off the door.

Then you know also that this isn't the end.

By that she means that she's still there. He can still feel her presence fluttering around him, subtly watching him. He throws himself into his work, tries to reconnect with friends, and oddly regularly emails Professor Norman. He tells him everything, he needs an outlet, an anchor of his own to reassure himself that it was indeed real in some way. The doctor is sympathetic and not too incredulous, but I suppose he wouldn't be – he knows her too. Crazy is just a word in the dictionary when you've met Lucy.

When Estelle, his new neighbour that moved in three months after Lucy left him, and eight months ago from today, subtly asks him out for a third time, he cautiously accepts. They go to a bar, they get along and he even feels something despite dreaming (of the traditional kind made solely from his subconscious) of her most nights and in the morning mumbling her name into his pillows as he comes.

He feels a small nudge as he walks Estelle to her door and she stands there expectantly. Her lips are not her lips but he feels something and quite honestly he's grateful.

Being in love with a ghost is tiring.

By the fourth date he's stopped fantasizing about her in his private moments. By the time they're officially together the dreams are almost gone, if he does dream of her, he doesn't remember it. But there's still something he's holding back. He knows Estelle senses it because he can feel her studying him when she thinks he's not aware. He never tells her that he loves her first, and he just cannot be around her. Lucy has become such a big part of his life, that by withholding her, he withholds apart of himself. Professor Norman suggests telling Estelle a modified version of the truth. He feels queasy just at the thought.

Maybe he doesn't want to share her.

In the end, Estelle calls him out about it one evening over dinner. The raclette cheese solidifies on plate like the lump currently lodged in his throat.

'I know that you love me, I get that, but there's just something missing. And whilever that's the case … I'm not sure it's going to work between us.'

He doesn't even try to deny it.

I'm haunted by a dead woman consumed by a computer.

'I want to tell you, I just can't. It's too painful'

'Work related?'

He nods, it's not really a lie. He did meet her because of his work, yes.

Estelle doesn't come round or call him for the next two weeks.

He loses count of the times he goes to contact her, but chickens out.

'You are so stubborn, it's infuriating. I cannot concentrate on anything.'

A lazy smile spreads across his face. He opens his eyes slowly as she floods his senses. A flicker of surprise registers as he notices her black dress replaced with a white one. It makes her look almost angelic.

She smiles wryly

'I am anything but.'

'I thought you'd left' he asks sitting up and taking in his surroundings. It's a bright sunny day in le jardin de Luxembourg like the time he came here after he'd been promoted to capitaine.

'I had, but you won't let go of me.' She says and he can hear the annoyance in her tone 'I thought Estelle would be enough'

'Then you clearly underestimate your own attraction, and overestimate your power over other people.'

That seems to throw her and he sees several things flash through her eyes before the shutters come down.

'I'm sorry Pierre'

He sees sparks of gold as she touches her fingertips to the corners of his forehead.

He wakes up his flat with a killer headache, the distant smell of grass in his nostrils. He looks down for the empty whiskey bottle but doesn't see one. He frowns trying to piece together as to how he might have ended up passed out on the sofa, but he's met only with blanks. The pounding intensifies the more he thinks so he gives up and staggers to the medicine cabinet for some left over strong painkillers from when he's been injured.

The first thing he does after waking the second time, is ring Estelle. He has no idea why he hasn't before, she answers but is guarded. She agrees however to meet him for coffee.

He tells her about Lucy.

'She's gone.'

'What do you mean? Where is she?'

The screen behinds their heads flickers and the caption under the news story flashes.

I am everywhere

'She's dead.'

She grasps his hand.

'I'm sorry.'


End file.
